Attractiveness is defined interpersonally. One person may attract another. To attract oneself is physically (you are already there) impossible, though mentally you might perhaps “draw nearer” to yourself. Attraction of the self to itself, whatever it is, can only be derivative of one’s attractiveness to others. Being attractive to others has enormous implications for evolutionary fitness, self-esteem, and social as well as material success in life. Attractive people have more sex and more children, they get paid more, and they get shorter sentences when misbehaving. These advantages may offend your sense of fairness, which makes them all the more interesting to study.
If attractive people are treated better than plain people, you should be able to figure out how attractive you are by keeping a log of how others respond to you. Yet, many people do not have a good sense of how others see them. Observers agree more strongly with one another when rating a person’s attractiveness than the person agrees with an individual observer, on average.
This difference in agreement may seem like a problem, but do not be too surprised (or upset). Remember that the definition of attractiveness virtually guarantees the superiority of observer judgments. Observers literally decide how attractive you are; you can only judge how attractive you are to others by taking their perspective.
Given these difficulties, it is natural to expect perceptual or judgmental distortions in self-perceptions of attractiveness. A recent poll conducted by the Brown Daily Herald yielded the following result in a sample of 714 undergraduates: Among those who responded (17.4% did not), 69% believed they were “somewhat attractive” 18% thought they were very attractive, 11% somewhat unattractive, and 2% very unattractive. Clearly, there is an overall self-enhancement effect. It is not possible for 4 out of 5 individuals to be better than average (or, to be precise, better than the median).
The size of the self-enhancement effect may be inflated in this survey. In conversation, Stephanie Krueger (11) pointed out that there was no option to indicate a belief of being average. Had there been such an option, a good percentage of the participants might have chosen it. Yet, most of the remaining participants would still have claimed to be more rather than less attractive than others.
Why is there a self-enhancement bias? A deceptively simple answer is that self-perception is a cognitive illusion. A look in the mirror is much like a look at a display of a visual illusion in a psychology textbook. Think of it: Your face and body as a Ponzo illusion! Alas, the analogy between self-enhancement bias and visual illusions is not a good one. The visual displays that bring forth illusory perceptions are carefully constructed to do so. The human face or body, as far as we know, is not. Another difference is that visual illusions are nearly universally seen as such, at least among members of a given culture. In contrast, not every person shows a self-enhancement bias; some show an effacement bias. In short, to say that self-enhancement bias is a cognitive illusion is not to say much at all. Analogies can only illustrate; they cannot explain. Indeed, analogies tend to create the illusion that an explanation has been achieved, when it has not.
So we need to ask again: Why does self-enhancement occur? Again, Stephanie Krueger offers an interesting idea. Perhaps there is value in placing oneself above average. When people judge themselves, they are probably mindful of what their judgments communicate to others. This should be so especially for an issue like attractiveness, which is defined by the perspective of others. Arguably, a person who places him- or herself below average communicates a lack of self-respect, confidence, or self-esteem.
The functional explanation of self-enhancement raises the general issue that judgments come with costs and benefits. When objective criteria—such aggregated observer judgments—are available, a person’s judgment of own attractiveness can result in one of four different outcomes. The person believes to be above average, and is (hit); believes to be above average, but is not (false positive); believes to be below average and is (correct rejection); believes to be below average, but is not (miss). A hit a good in two ways: it feels good to be above average and to be correct in one’s assessment. Each of the other three combinations of judgment (belief) and criterion (truth) involves mixed emotions. It follows that to believe that one is above average is a necessary—though not a sufficient—condition for reaping an unambivalently positive experience.
The functional perspective suggests that the costs of a false positive are less than the benefits of a hit. By and large, individuals who consider themselves attractive are happier and less depressed than individuals who do not, and subjective judgments of one’s own attractiveness are better predictors of happiness than are the judgments of others (i.e., one’s “true” attractiveness; see, for example, Noles et al., 1985).
Noles, S. W., Cash, T. F., & Winstead, B. A. (1985). Body image, physical attractiveness, and depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53, 88-94.
